What's Happening This Week:

This week will be a little bit different than normal. We will be attending a production by the Colorado Symphony tomorrow (Tuesday) with Mrs. Johnson and the Middle School Band students. We will leave the school approximately 9:45am and return back to CCA at approximately 2:30pm. Students will need a disposable sack lunch and drink.

We will also attend the Weld Central High School 5th Grade Career Fair on Wednesday morning. We will leave approximately 9:15am and return by 10:30am.

Important Upcoming Dates:

March 17th - 5th & MS Field Trip to Colorado Symphony Performance

March 18th - 5th Grade to WCHS for Career Fair (am only)

March 21st - Spring Musical

March 24-27 - Relay for Life Spirit Week

March 27th - Mini Relay for Life

March 27th - Intermediate Pi Day Celebration (teachers will provide pies)

March 31-April 4th - Spring Break

April 7-24th - CMAS Testing

April 24th - 3-8 Spring Program @ WCHS 6:30pm

This week:

We will wrap up Chapter 9 - Multiplying Fractions on Wednesday afternoon. We will take a short quiz over this concept, while continuing with Chapter 10 - Dividing Decimals. I teach these two chapters together because if you can multiply fractions you can divide them! We will have a combined assessment after we wrap up Chapter 10 early next week.

We will continue to work in small groups with Mrs. Herman to work on volume as well as Coordinate Plane. I am hoping to add in Line Plots as well before CMAS. In order for that to happen, students need to be able to focus during instructional time. Concepts worked on in small group will *NOT* be homework, unless students cannot stay on task.

We will continue our Poetry unit this week and next. This will take us through Spring Break and end as we start End of Year testing.

We will continue our Wonder Novel Study this week. This is one of my favorite books. We often have amazing conversations throughout the book. I ask students to self-reflect during discussion and writing prompts.

It is quite long so it will take us through March and into April. I hope to be able to watch the movie at the end.

We took our Investigating Matter Unit Assessment on Thursdays. Students who did not get an 8 or higher were asked to retake it on Friday on paper while I was gone. Students who received an 8 were given the option to retake if they wanted. Scores were averaged. Look for those scores to go in later today. In IC you will see 3 scores - Original Google Form, Retake and Average. In parenthesis you will see their raw points (x/10).

I would like to facilitate a few more experiments and demonstrations between now and break to reinforce some of these concepts that students struggled with.

However, some students continue to struggle with paying attention and staying on task. This makes it very difficult for me do facilitate the experiments while managing behaviors and off-task students. This also interferes with their understanding of the concepts.

Please talk with your student about staying on task so we can continue learning and not being disruptive.

We will start our Protecting Earth's Resources Science unit on Wednesday. (Tuesday if we get back in time.)

We will use our Riggs time for extra Grammar practice. Reviewing what we know and what we might see for CMAS after Spring Break. It became very evident through some of our work last week that students are struggling with concepts that they should have mastered previously, i.e. capitalization, punctuation, past/present tense, etc. As such, we will continue to reteach and practice these concepts and more, until we take CMAS ELA after break.

We will not have new Riggs Lists until after break with our Civil War Unit.

New lists are current content based across subjects. Lists will only have 3 words. Students will be required to write each word with markings 4 times each, look up each word in the dictionary (writing down part of speech, page number and proper definition), and writing a sentence using each word correctly.

New lists will be posted to Parent Square.

We will work on our writing skills within the Poetry unit as well.

We won't have another major essay due until after CMAS/NWEA testing when we complete our final End of Year writing assessment with our Civil War Research Project. More info to come.

March 17th - 5th & MS Field Trip to Colorado Symphony Performance

March 18th - 5th Grade to WCHS for Career Fair (am only)

March 21st - Spring Musical

March 24-27 - Relay for Life Spirit Week

March 27th - Mini Relay for Life

March 27th - Intermediate Pi Day Celebration

March 31-April 4th - Spring Break

April 7-24th - CMAS Testing

April 24th - 3-8 Spring Program @ WCHS 6:30pm